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1. Dog Day, Fade Out (Fundog). It’s late enough in the year that I can start making conclusive statements about the best albums of 2013, but I worry that at this point I’ve so egregiously exposed my Dog Day problem to regular readers that that no one will take it seriously if I declare Fade Out one of the best albums of 2013. If you still trust me and you’re asking, though, Fade Out is one of the best albums of 2013.

Seth Smith and Nancy Urich sounded scrappily triumphant after losing the other half of their band and carrying on as a duo on 2011’s Deformer. But Fade Out is where the pared-down Dog Day Mk. II gathers the loose (Goth-y) strands left over from 2009’s tremendous Concentration and renews the band’s claim to being the best thing to happen to shoegaze-stricken lo-fi indie-pop from the Maritimes since the whole Eric’s Trip/Elevator/Rick White thing first more or less introduced “shoegaze-stricken lo-fi indie-pop from the Maritimes” into the CanCon critical vernacular.

It’s brave to open a record with a tune called “Blackened” when you’re not Metallica, but this one propels Fade Out outward from a seductive, Joy Division-esque sinkhole into 40 further minutes of dour New Wave tourism that, four albums in, no longer sounds like a collaged checklist of audible influences — My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Eric’s Trip among them, with a soft spot for Elliott Smith newly exposed on “Dirtbag” — but rather Dog Day and Dog Day alone.

2. The Heavy Blinkers, Health (Independent). Health is the first album to be released under the moniker of Halifax’s hallowed Heavy Blinkers in nearly 10 years, but it would probably give the record a little extra juice above and beyond the Blinkers cult if someone were to affix to it a sticker saying something like “Jenn Grant sings here!” That’s not to diminish the talents of Jason Michael MacIsaac, the sole original Heavy Blinker presiding as songwriter, arranger and principal multi-instrumentalist over the swoony, baroque prettiness going on here, just to say that Health is at its best when the voice of a certain Jenn Grant comes to the fore. Melanie Stone, Stewart Legere, Norwegian singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche and High Llamas’ Sean O’Hagan all assume their moments in the soft-focus/soft-pop spotlight with appropriately mild-mannered composure. But the highlights all belong to Grant, who’s at her sultry, would-be-Bond-girl best on “Anna Karina, I Was Wrong” and further asserts herself as the ideal singer to bring MacIsaac’s ornate compositions to life on “Silence Your Drum” and “Crystal Clear.” The casual bossa nova sashay of “Call It a Day” is also rather lovely.

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3. No Joy, Pastel and Pass Out (Mexican Summer). A lot of so-called “nü-gaze” guitar bands aspire to recreate the perfect balance between abrasion and beauty achieved by My Bloody Valentine circa Loveless, but Montreal noise-rock duo No Joy seems particularly committed to getting it absolutely right. New EP Pastel and Pass Outfurther prettifies, poppifies and polishes what Jasmine White-Glutz and Laura Lloyd were already doing exceptionally well on 2010’s wicked Ghost Blonde and this year’s fine Wait to Pleasure — i.e., pitting ooey-gooey dream-pop melody against hair-raising high-volume violence — suggesting that whatever comes next might well be their career-making magnum opus. No Joy plays the Garrison on Friday, Dec. 6.

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